I know everyone's tired of Guantanamo bay...

[Urbane Guerrilla]

The strategy, and the tactics too, are: shrink the Thomas P.M. Barnettian Gap portion of the globe.

Queg, your point being, I suspect, that Congress has not passed a declaration of a state of war. The Constitution does not and never did require that be done. Consequently, we've been in about 150 shooting wars of one size or another. War was Congressionally declared for five. And nobody's ever been jailed for it, nor is anyone likely to. It is considered by wise persons (the rabidly anti-Republican must be excluded from this number) that the flexibility that results is necessary to handle the nasty little surprises that from time to time come up in foreign parts -- particularly in that abovementioned Gap. Shots fired and servicepeople down equals a war, particularly when we're going over there to do something about it -- no disparaging quotemarks or other this-is-not-a-war havering or illogic-chopping need apply. Not all the this-is-not-a-war types want us winning it, and bad cess and overflowing cesspools to that lot of half witty peckerslaps. In other words, they are liars and their parents were married -- to other people. Remember, too, just who it was that started it -- and tried to start it for eighteen years at that, from Marine Barracks Beirut in 1983 et seq. A declaration of war might have simplified the legal situation, but it would have restricted civilian civil liberties -- and not the maybes and allegations clouding the lower troposphere around DC, NYC, and the Bay Area -- and the whole idea of a Congressional declaration seemed disproportionate to the conflict as anticipated. It still seems disproportionate.

The crushing of undemocracies is what our nation does, and to my mind, is; partly by example, partly by bomb and bayonet. We've been at just that for over a hundred years straight now. I take a due measure of pride in having participated in the endeavor.

And "treating with dignity" by the other side has simply not happened.